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Question2

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  • Status Update From Devcat?

    And things like this is why no one really responds from Nexon's end of things .- . You cant really expect a company to reply back if nothing but disrespectful assumptions are thrown about. As much as no one wants to believe this statement it is however true.

    Disrespectful? Those are perfectly reasonable assumptions based on available data. We know exactly why the game has had more and more ridiculous stat requirements tacked onto it...so Nexon can sell more runes.

    s1 bosses were balanced for people with average gear, this is why roch bosses die extremely quickly if you have a party of 4 at attack cap. They were balanced for parties with +10 level 60 wapons and 12-14k attack, with attack caps of about 18k or so.

    s2 bosses and beyond have massively inflated hp pools because they are balanced for parties at or near attack cap. 4 people at attack cap (NOT counting +15s or anything crazy) will take way longer to kill them because of their HP pool. Not to mention the massive crit resist on s3 bosses. Even characters wtih the level 80 +9 event gear and about 19k attack do very little damage in s3 raids, because again, they are balanced for people at attack cap.

    Roch/Drags were the best balanced point of the game, in terms of stat requirements. s2 and beyond was a shameless money grab to get people to buy runes.

    If you had a +13 or better, you used to be able to skip the next tier of weapons, Devcat realised this meant less runes so they made level 95 weapons super OP so that a +13 level 90 wont be able to compete. Therefore, more runes = more money.

    Everyone can login to any of the NA servers now to see how many people are just afking while playing BDO or other stuff. Most of the afkers at the start of the event got their rewards and dont bother to login anymore. At the start of the event, at least 3/4ths of every server were just afking for the rewards while playing other games. This is not a good indication by any means.

    Even my KR friend who plays vindi KR says a lot of korean players are boycotting vindi because of the current director.
    ArishaLFuzetsuSilverFenix
  • Status Update From Devcat?

    2edgy4u wrote: »
    You gotta understand the f2p model caters to whales. Hate it all you want, but the company is after your money first, minimizing costs second, and delivering a quality product like 11th or so. Not defending them, but such is the reality we live in. Most of the money goes into the hands of the people at the top, and only the bare minimum is reinvested into the devs to keep them working at a steadily declining rate. But hey, if those devs wanted a good life they should have been born into wealth and become an investor!

    Not really true, there are two ways to handle the f2p model (in general). You can either make money via lots of micro transactions for minor things like cosmetics, more character slots, minor buffs, etc, or make lots of money via relatively few transactions for huge things like enchancement runes, etc.

    Nexon KR/Devcat obviously went with the latter. The problem with this is that it has resulted in tons of people quitting for games like BDO. Low server population (NOT counting the afkers) simply encourages more people to jump ship to BDO and other games because "ehhhh theres nobody playing this game anyway".

    Nexon's reaction to people quitting has always been "meh, as long as we make a profit, who cares?". That's one way of looking at it, sure. To use an analogy...imagine if you had a cafe or something, and you realised that most of the people coming in to your cafe were just sitting around eating food brought in from elsewhere but not buying anything from you (aka playing BDO while afking for free stuff). Some cafe owners would simply shrug and not care as long as they make a profit at the end of the quarter (what Nexon does), while some cafe owners would stop and think about how they could make all those potential customers spend money at their place instead of their competitors instead.

    Nexon isn't doing the latter. Hence, masses of afkers in town playing BDO and more and more people quitting because "the game is dead, may as well go over to BDO where all my friends are".

    Theres a myth in the MMO industry that you have to make the cash shop super expensive and powerful to get people to buy from it. Many MMOs have repeatedly proven this false. BDO is just the most famous example. Sure, you get stat boosts from the BDO cash shop, but nothing is nearly as important as needing runes to make a +10 enchanted weapon to be (moderately) useful in end game content. It is really, really hard to get new players to stick around the moment they realise they have to buy runes to +10 and double enchant a weapon for s3. Unless there is an event giving them free enhancement coupons or whatever, most new players just give up and quit when they realise this.

    The current direction of the game is sadly, looking to be more pay2win. You need at least a +12 to hit neamhain's attack cap without temp buffs, and she is obviously balanced for people at attack cap. Level 95 weapons will have 3k more attack compared to level 90 ones and level 95 bosses will have stats balanced for people in full level 95 gear, just like how s3 bosses are balanced for people in full level 90 gear. Royal raids alone are balanced for 16 man parties of very well geared players...runs take 20+ minutes of soul crushing boredom if at least half the party isnt very well geared. And they are going to re-balance RRs/Nif so that the bosses drop the same loot but their stats are balanced for people in full level 95 gear when Dullahan is released.

    This is honestly, dumb as . It is the s2 fiasco again, when even KR players quit the game en-masse because the stat requirements were insane and devcat had to scramble to reduce the s2 boss DEF and make it easier to craft level 70 gear. Anyone else remember how many people used to play this game when level 70 was the cap and roch/drags were the end game? Even the AUS server had 100+ players online at prime time during this point because roch/dragons was the most well designed point of the game, in terms of progression and storyline. s2's stat requirements contributed to a massive exodus of players who felt that they couldnt get the stats required to do end game, so simply stopped trying.

    Most of those players are now playing other games and will never come back. And Devcat wants to repeat history again. I already know one guy with a +15 OJ weapon and fully enchanted gear who literally rage quitted when he found out about Dullahan and level 95 gear. He is now playing BDO and refuses to come back. This guy spent tons of money in the supply depot and Nexon has lost one of their cash cows because they are desperate to milk people for runes with level 95 gear.
    Fuzetsu
  • Status Update From Devcat?

    I would be surprised if Devcat has anyone capable of speaking english fluently, good luck hearing from them. Thats assuming they want to talk to you at all.

    There is a reason why you almost never hear from korean game developers directly when their products are licensed for overseas markets. Game companies with similar arrangements usually have the overseas distributor (Nexon NA in this case) handle everything with the overseas market because frankly, they could care less as long as they get paid according to the contract.

    Its like, Mcdonalds. Mcdonalds has different branches all over the world right? Mcdonalds HQ isnt going to talk to, say, korean customers directly. Thats not their job. That's Mcdoanlds Korea's job. Mcdonalds HQ only cares about how well Mcdonalds in Korea performs. The only time Mcdonalds HQ starts looking at things on that level is if Mcdonalds Korea is making a MASSIVE loss and the HQ believes they need to completely replace senior management for Mcdonalds Korea. And even then they wont talk to Korean customers directly, they would be sending executives to Korea to do a major shakeup of the operation, and they would be talking to middle and lower management. At no point whatsoever would you see someone at Mcdoanld HQ trying to engage Korean customers via social media or whatever to find out what they think (even assuming they have someone capable of speaking Korean there).

    So no, devcat isnt going to answer any questions, even assuming they understand it. Hell, I bet they ignore most korean players all the time unless they want to do a highly publciized Q&A session (like most game companies).

    What is the direction of the game? More lame parallel updates to delay content release obviously. Devcat has been following this model since the start of s2 since it is very easy for them. Why increase the level cap every episode when you can delay level cap increases for a whole season instead? More lazily copied and pasted gear all with the exact same stats (this isnt a prediction, we already KNOW Dullahan will just be using copied and pasted stats).

    Getting more players to play? They dont care about that. Devcat is not out to grab market share. That is not theri business model. They are out to maximize profits. So if one crazy korean guy spends $200 per month on runes, they are totally fine with that vs 10 players spending less money per month (which is how BDO and other western games operate).

    While Nexon NA likely has some leeway to set prices for their regions, its Devcat that ultimately determines things like "No, you HAVE to keep the shitty permanent item destruction model, we don't care if you lose players to games like BDO because of it, how else will we make money from runes?".

    Devcat doesnt care at all about competition from games like BDO. Why? They are not korean focused. Devcat's major competitors are OTHER korean MMOs who are targetting korean players, most of which we have never heard from. It's the overseas publishers that are facing competition from games like BDO, but their licence agreement obviously limits them in terms of what they can do. To Devcat, if Nexon NA is struggling because too many people are hopping over to BDO (becuse of the enhancing/enchanting system, etc) , thats not their problem, it's Nexon NA's problem.

    Basically, its like you (sales manager) telling your boss (CEO) that the product sucks and customers are jumping ship to your competitors. Your boss shrugs and tells you to deal with it because thats your job. Thats assuming Nexon NA even recognises a problem in the first place. Keep in mind that executives dont see the situation on the ground....they dont login and see the masses of afkers in town playing BDO. They just look at quarterly reports and as long as they see a nice profit they are happy with that. I can 100% guarantee you that they have absolutely NO idea how many of the accounts that have been inactive for a yearr or more quit beacuse of other games like BDO, because they dont bother trying to find out why those accounts are inactive (assuming they even prepare reports with the number of inactive accounts).

    This is why everytime we near the end of a quarter, Nexon NA brings out big events to try and get people to spend money (so the managers can prepare reports that look good to senior management). End result : tons of afkers in town, like what we see now. All those people logging in just to afk, get free stuff, logout, then play BDO. Ask yourself, how many people on your friend list do you know just login to afk while they play other games?

    Im honestly not sure why Nexon NA isnt trying to copy games like BDO in terms of how they monetize the game. Companies are usually very quick to copy a competitor when they do something successful, look at the Apple Iphone for example, Nokia and everyone else jumped straight on the smartphone + touch screen bandwagon. Maybe they are limited by their licence agreement or they genuinely believe that their current system works just fine.

    Then again, they dont play this game and dont see more than 75% of the server afking in town while playing BDO, they only look at the bottom line. Which will remain profitable as long as people login, afk, spend $500 on boxes for things like the succubus queen outfit then go play BDO.
    XieJackNitroaegeahraerherh
  • +15 Maximum enhancement coupon

    The most annoying thing is when someone does get a +15 coupon, then they use it and quit the game shortly after because they want to play BDO or something. Its such a waste, when so many people struggle to gear up and could have used the help instead.
    AnthonytonyboyLoneWolf96
  • Fergus need to get fired.

    Im pretty sure that vindictus uses seeds for RNG generation, and its not close to 100% random. If you want an example of a game that is known to use seeds for RNG generation, look at titan quest. When you start the game, it generates a seed that determines the loot rolls you can get, so you need to keep restarting the game or you will just get the same rolls over and over.

    I recorded the results of 1000 items incinerated over a period of weeks, there were a lot of streaks.

    There was also a day where, for the first time in like 2 months, suddenly 4 people got enthus on the same day on the AUS server from hero succubus...seeing a single enthus for sale is extremely rare on AUS (it usually happens once a month or two), let alone 4 in one day.

    And most people know someone who has gotten insanely rare results from enhancing/enchanting...like I know a guy who failed to +11 more than 12 times. Odds of that happening is worse than 0.000016%.
    HawkaiGough